Don't Hold Your Breath for Tighter Gun Control

Immediately after Saturday's shooting in Tucson, it looked as though Congress might be considering stricter gun laws. At six days out, though, a consensus seems to be forming that gun regulation will get no tighter as a result of the shooting--and if anything, it may become more permissive. A common argument is that if more bystanders had been armed at the Tucson Safeway this week, Jared Loughner might have been stopped earlier, and lives might have been saved. Here are some assessments of the political climate at week's end, and a few of the responses:

America Is a Gun Country Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican who's suggested a bill making it illegal to carry a gun within 1,000 feet of a member of Congress, told The New York Times that "this kind of legislation is very difficult." He added that "Congress has not done any gun legislation in years," and that "once you get out of the Northeast, guns are a part of daily life."

Congresspeople Are a Gun-Friendly Bunch The Times notes that "many members of Congress own firearms, which they carry while riding
around in farm trucks in their district or concealed behind a jacket in
the streets, among constituents." The Times also points out that "Representative Gabrielle Giffords once said that she herself owned a Glock--the same firearm the man accused of shooting her is said to have used." Meanwhile, The Christian Science Monitor reports that "at least two congressmen--Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R) of Utah and Heath
Shuler (D) of North Carolina, both licensed gun carriers from staunchly
pro-gun parts of their states--announced they'd be carrying weapons
during upcoming public events in their districts."

In AZ, Get Ready for Historically Lax Laws, predicts Slate's David Weigel. "The Tucson shooting is likely to lead to Arizona's loose gun-control laws getting even looser--looser than they were when they applied to Wyatt Earp."

Only Fictional Characters Talk About Gun Control, laments Matt Miller at The Washington Post. Miller quotes from a No Safe Place, a 1998 novel by Richard North Patterson, in which a presidential candidate makes an impassioned call for tighter gun laws. "It's crazy that we need to look to fictional heros for leadership on guns, but that's the state of our politics," writes Miller. "How many more well-armed lunatic loners will it take before our real leaders sound like real leaders?"

This Is All As It Should Be, argues the libertarian economist Jeffrey Miron. Writing at Bloomberg, Miron points out that "even if strict controls or prohibition had prevented
Loughner from obtaining a gun, he might have still carried out a
violent attack ... A determined
lunatic has multiple ways to inflict harm." Miron adds that "strict controls and prohibition... don't eliminate
guns any more than drug prohibition stops drug trafficking and
use," and so "if gun laws follow the path of drug laws, we can expect more
violence under gun prohibition than in a society with limited or
no controls."

OK, Have Fun With That, America "There is now a cross-party consensus against any steps to tighten America's uniquely lax gun laws," writes Alexander Chancellor at The Guardian. "The more innocent people are killed by guns, the more determined
Americans are to possess them. Legislators do not dare challenge this
insanity." Chancellor's provocative conclusion? "The trouble with America is that it is too democratic. In Britain,
parliament is at least sometimes capable of acting out of principle
against the popular will, as it did when it abolished capital
punishment, but in the US this is impossible."

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